"The recount never really happened," notes Kevin Spacey, correctly, about the 2000 Florida election debacle in his interview Wednesday night on Countdown, in advance of Recount, HBO's theatrical retelling of the nightmare. The film premieres this Sunday.

Some weeks ago, we ran an item which included the theatrical trailer for the film and noted that we've neither seen it, nor been contacted by anybody from the production (they didn't purchase an ad here either, boo hoo) but that they did manage to use our "Stuck in the Middle With You" theme song for the film, curiously enough, as you'll see in the trailer. We'll take it as a compliment, as if we have a choice.

We also noted, with evidence, that Al Gore received more votes than George W. Bush in the state of Florida in 2000, and that seven whistleblowers from the company, Sequoia Voting Systems, who produced the paper ballots for Florida, have come forward to reveal that they were forced by someone to use bad paper on those ballots (only in Florida) against their objections, and to misalign the chads on them (only in Palm Beach County). To this day, other than Dan Rather at HDNet, who originally ran the report, nobody in the corporate media has found that story worthy of following up, or even merely reporting.

But for the third in our countdown of productions with the word "count" in its title, we turn to our friend Mary Mancini, who smartly blogs at the website of the documentary film Uncounted (We're in it, so see FULL DISCLOSURE at end of this article). Mancini notes that Olbermann, during his interview with Spacey (at left, including clip from film), joined so many other journalists who have taken the opportunity of the premiere of HBO's film to miss more than a few good journalistic opportunities...

With all the publicity surrounding this movie, now would be the perfect time for journalists to take the national conversation to the next level and ask the most logical follow up questions:

1) Why wasn’t our electoral process equipped, as Kevin Spacey says in the interview, “to handle margins of victory so small and margins of error so big” in 2000?
2) Are we equipped to do so now?
...
Another great opportunity was lost last night when during the interview Spacey explains the punch-card recount process:

That when you have a margin of victory so small, you have to go to what is called an automatic machine recount and yet, 18 counties, over 1,500,00 votes, didn’t bother to put their ballots back through the machine. They just re-tabulated the memory card, and you always get a different count when you do a machine recount. So, when you kind of realize that, well, that’s ’cause people just couldn’t bother to do it, um, it’s pretty stunning that…that…so..when Baker and Bush kept coming out and saying, “The votes have been counted, and they’ve been counted again, and Gore wants to count them a third time,” they were actually never counted.

No, they weren't. And the Supreme Court demanded that they remain uncounted, so Bush could be named "President."

Only the media and academic consortium who actually did bother to count all of those ballots [PDF] afterwards in Florida would know that Gore received more votes than Bush. Period. Even if they've done a superb job of keeping that little fact to themselves ever since. Whether HBO's Recount tells that truth, we'll have to wait until Sunday to find out.

Following below, for your convenience, are both the HBO trailer for Recount and, once again, the breathtaking Dan Rather report on the gaming of the paper ballots in Florida's 2000 election...

Recount trailer:

HDNet's remarkable interview with 7 company whistleblowers from Sequoia, and their explanation for all of those curiously "hanging chads" (text transcript here):

FULL DISCLOSURE: As mentioned, we appear in the highly-recommended documentary film Uncounted, though we make no money from its sale. However, the filmmaker David Earnhardt has been kind enough to make exclusive, hand-signed copies of the DVD available to BRAD BLOG supporters in return for a donation of $50 here. Please feel free to help us out, and we'll get one sent to you right away!

It isn't a matter of "absolute proof" --- as far as we can tell, the preponderance of the evidence points against your position.

The analogy to global warming is inappropriate because, in the case of Ohio 2004, the weight of expert opinion is against you, not with you. Expert opinion of course could be wrong, but it's sort of unnerving if you don't know what it is.

This is called sophistry and the invoking of authority. To be blunt, his sentence structures tend to not make sense. Expert opinion is unnerving if you don't know what it is? What about the expert opinion of Brad, Crispin Miller, Bob Fitrakis, Professor Freeman and so many others?

Lindeman loves to attack the common nobody. His main argument to folks is nothing to see here, move along.

Yes, the appeal to authority ("experts" and "studies") is a problem in the public domain.

In the courts it takes an interesting path:

Experts and non-experts have an equal opportunity in that space.

In the courts my definition of “expert” is “A person who is allowed by the court to get paid more than the average person on the street would to give an opinion”.

In the typical case “experts” will give their opinions to the jury … an opposite opinion for each side. They are sworn in, list their degrees, and the court makes a ruling that they are experts. Then they explain that they looked at some evidence and tell the jury what their opinion is.

The expert for the defense has one opinion and the expert for the prosecutor has another and different opinion … on the exact same evidence.

Then the everyday folk on the jury make the decision as to which expert was right! Yes, the person who left the farm after a 5:00 am breakfast, and drove the truck into town for that day’s jury duty, decides which rocket scientist had it right.

If you are wondering why this is so, remember that the foundation of jury theory is that the people can determine facts better or more accurately than experts in the law can.

By “better or more accurately” I mean in the context of the use of power. The people tend not to use the power they are given to destroy their fellow citizens as governmental agents have tended to in the past.

The old saying that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is directed at governments rather than at juries.

i watched the interview last night on oblerman and was dissapointed that neither mentioned the 175,000 ovr votes that were nevr counted
no wonder the american peops dont know the truth of things,msnbc comes as close as any msm to telling truth but they fall short

I tend to agree with the jury analogy. The jurors usually don't have a personal interest in the outcome other than for being in a "for the grace of God but me" outlook.

This guy Lindeman somehow is entrenched with "election integrity." It feels like he is trying to steer the movement. In 98% of his posts, one will see him debunking election fraud. Every once in a while someone will call his bluff and ask him for proof that the elections weren't stolen. His response is simply more evoking of authority.

I'm Mark Lindeman. I am a Political Scientist. You are an annoying citizen on a hobby horse. Now shut up and be grateful that I spend any time with you common peons.

Karen, great minds think alike. I was gonna post some cynicism towards Olbermann this morning. He really is a modern day Murrow. I read once that Murrow actually came out strong against the red scare nonsense, once it was politically viable to do so. Phil Donahue was saying the same things as Keith is now when it wasn't politically correct. Donahue got canned even though his ratings were on the upswing.

Where is Keith Olbermann as regards to covering election fraud? Yeah, he was good for one week back in 2004. I remember him covering Barbara Boxer's efforts. His special comments are good, but they aren't exactly ground breaking. Some folks talk about a venting theory.

Oh, look at Keith ranting, we must still live in a free society, it's all been because of Bush and Cheney.

The 2000 election was the first overt effort to steal an election by stopping an election recount and arbitrarily (but politically) declaring a winner. The Supreme Court really had no standing or business stepping into the middle of Florida's State Supreme Court action and stopping it. At best they should only have been able to stay and review the procedures before allowing the recount to continue. If the legal recount had continued Bush would not have won. (Also... do not forget that 9/11 occurred within days of the unofficial recount being made public. What timing neh.)

Still.... elections have been finagled from the beginning of vote counting centuries ago. However, the present times have shown a greed beyond sense where their actions have pulled the curtain back to the point that most of us have seen the wizard and his infernal machines controlling our perception of a free and fair election. The veil has been lifted.... at least for those of us paying attention.

Lyndon Johnson finagled the Texas vote for John Kennedy more than George Bush (of Houston then) did for Dick Nixon. And the Texas vote was the deciding state in the 1960 election. (It seems that someone thought it was also fitting to kill him in Texas.)

My opinion is that greed, stupidity and hubris have weakened the Republican Party to the point of oblivion.... or a name change.
The Democratic Party is mostly bought and controlled by special interests to the point that they currently have very little power to achieve anything for democracy.
The American people.... if enough of us are paying attention... are trying to reinstate democratic government with Obama.
I can only hope and pray that our foes understand that if they assassinate him there will be riots and demonstrations. I can also hope that our foes understand that maintaining an overt police state will be as easy to do in America as it has been in Iraq.

I don't know if anyone saw Dennis Leary on Jon Stewart, but Stewart was trying to get him to talk about Recount, and he didn't say a word about it. Did anyone see that? He kept pimping some other DVD he had coming out at the same time. I guess he didn't think Recount was that important (?) or he was too busy fooling around with Jon Stewart. Or he became a huge dick. One of those...

I went through it. But like the humanitarian world educated person I thought I was. I was silenced too. If you did not experience it personally you really should reach out because everything is suppressed here. Help me.